Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan have promised at least $3bn in funding for a medical initiative to cure, prevent or manage all known diseases by the end of the century.
The program, managed by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) that the duo set up after the birth of their first child, will fund scientific research that …

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Overly cynical?

No!

I count at least 4 PR comments here as usual, plus I must say I am in agreement with those who are less than impressed. 3 billion is undoubtedly useful to medical reserch but like Gates, the Zuck thinks because he is a billionaire he knows better so instead of listening to the guys on the ground he has his own (tax avoiding) solution to all the ills of humanity. I will be interested to see what kind of society it will be when humans are an integral part of The Internet Of Things via Farcebook medical.

My first thought when I saw this? How much did the launch event cost and couldn't that money have been spent saving someone's life? I don't remember the Gates Foundations having big press launches for his initiatives other than when he wants to raise public awareness on an issue, not to announce he's spending money.

Zuckerberg also said that he would be bringing his engineering skills to setting up a global communications network to link scientists, researchers, engineers, and other specialists so that they could share that information.

Some form of packet switched computer network, perhaps, with many independent cooperating networks exchanging routing data so that any one node can communicate with any other?

Re: surely the enviromentalist dont want all disease cured

Re: surely the enviromentalist dont want all disease cured

It's a valid argument, though one that's hard to have since it requires billions to die, but generally isn't high birth rate a sign of a nation with poor healthcare and life expectancy? As countries become developed, birth rates naturally seem to drop to closer to 1 in 1 out?

A tad radical and fundamentalist be that solution, gazthejourno, .... and quite delusional too if you be not joking and laughing out loud at the nonsense being spouted :-) God has surely much better things to do in the mad house that is bedlam and mayhem. It is probably only in there that he/she/it is believed and their plans are perceived and conceived.

Re: surely the enviromentalist dont want all disease cured

"It's a valid argument, though one that's hard to have since it requires billions to die, but generally isn't high birth rate a sign of a nation with poor healthcare and life expectancy? As countries become developed, birth rates naturally seem to drop to closer to 1 in 1 out?"

And that is also a problem, because those nations need constantly growing economies and tax bases to pay for their Ponzi scheme like entitlement programs.

:-) .... Mad Monks 'R' Us is certainly an acquired taste, Doctor Syntax. And by Rasputin Rules is an Exhilarating Root for Great Games Plays. Success there is rewarded in Earthly Measured Pleasures to XSSXXXX.

Sofosbuvir?

Over 200 million people worldwide are infected with HepC. The drug Sofosbuvir presently seems to offer the best chance of a cure. The production cost is about $1 a pill, one a day being taken for a 12-week course along with other relatively inexpensive medicines. In the UK the price that the NHS would pay for such a course of treatment is currently about £35,000.

A firm called Gilead Sciences had bought the patent for the drug, paying $11 billion to a startup company, Pharmasset when their results showed promise. Their development of the drug had in turn been based on a research breakthrough at Cardiff university which had not been patented.

Sofosbuvir came to the market in 2013. By the first quarter of 2016 Gilead had collected £35 billion in revenue from HepC medicines.

There are maybe 5 million people with HepC in the USA alone, and Gilead is asking $84,000 each for its treatment. That's a total in Zuck's own back yard of more than a hundred times his £3 billion for just a single disease. It's not money that needed, it's an ethical approach to medicine.

Re: Sofosbuvir?

Well put, David. This drug is just the tip of the iceberg in quest for profits among big pharma. Most have basically shut down their research and go looking for startups with the next big profit maker. Since government and insurance are paying for these meds, there's nothing in the mindset of the average patient to insist on lower prices as it's paid for by someone else's money... or so they think.

Corporates and their major stockholders have no shame, no ethics. Pretty sad world we're in.

While Zuckerberg and Co fiddle, Rome crashes and burns

The implication in that tall tale is that throwing paper money at problems solves them although the evidence of Quantitative Easing which is being used to try and kickstart economies and deliver prosperity in a world of austerity and conflict has proven otherwise. Such simply reveals the nature of Man's slavery and those responsible who are not held accountable.

And they be increasingly aware of being clearly identified as persons of particular and peculiar interest and strategic targets for specific attention. Lurking in shadows pulling strings remotely nowadays, in order to act with impunity and enjoy immunity, is not just so easy as it used to be. It is an unprecedented and unpresidented novel state of affairs.

Do intelligence services monitor and mentor to maintain and protect a system in crisis because of the failure of its actions, or would they be reasonably expected to provide alternative means and new modes of mass administration for memes to follow and present as future viable reality substitutions? And be they far from being practically intelligent and useful should they fail to provide greater novel solutions to endemic systemic problems ..... and thus be they operating fraudulently, aiding and abetting in the crashing of systems?